Nehemiah 5:4
Still others were saying, "We have borrowed money to pay the king's tax on our fields and vineyards.
Sermons
A Great Schism AvertedHomiletic CommentaryNehemiah 5:1-13
Brave CompassionT. C. Finlayson.Nehemiah 5:1-13
Error and ReturnW. Clarkson Nehemiah 5:1-13
The Accusing Cry of HumanityHomiletic CommentaryNehemiah 5:1-13
The Friend of the PoorW. Ritchie.Nehemiah 5:1-13
The Rich Rebuked for Taking Advantage of the PoorJ.S. Exell Nehemiah 5:1-13
An Example of Successful Activity for GodR.A. Radford Nehemiah 5:1-19
The Blessing and Curse of MortgagesT. De Witt Talmage.Nehemiah 5:3-5
The Miseries of DebtHomiletic CommentaryNehemiah 5:3-5














I. THE POOR.

1. Numbers tend to poverty. "We, our sons, and our daughters, are many: therefore we take up corn for them, that we may eat, and live" (ver. 2).

2. Borrowing tends to poverty. "We have mortgaged our lands" (ver. 3).

3. Taxation tends to poverty. "We have borrowed money for the king's tribute" (ver. 4).

4. Poverty may sometimes have cause for protest against injustice.

5. Poverty is experienced by the people of God who are engaged in holy toils.

II. THE RICH.

1. The rich must not take undue advantage of calamitous circumstances. "Because of the dearth" (ver. 3).

2. The rich must not be inconsiderate. "Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren" (ver. 5).

3. The rich must not be cruel. "Our daughters are brought unto bondage" (ver. 5).

4. The rich must not violate the law of God. "Ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God?" (ver. 9).

III. THE REBUKE.

1. Angry. "And I was very angry."

2. Reflective. "I consulted with myself" (ver. 7).

3. Impartial. "The nobles and the rulers."

4. Sustained. "And I set a great assembly against them."

5. Argumentative (ver. 8).

6. Unanswerable. "They held their peace, and found nothing to answer."

7. Successful. "We will restore." - E.

We have mortgaged our lands.
Homiletic Commentary.
I. MENTAL UNREST.

II. SOCIAL DEGRADATION.

III. FAMILY RUIN.

IV. A DISREGARD OF A DIVINE COMMAND: "Thou shalt not steal." Application —

1. Christians should set the world an example.

2. Watch the beginnings of extravagance.

3. In small things as well as in greater act on Christian principle.

(Homiletic Commentary.)

The history of the mortgage would be the history of the domestic, social, financial, political, and ecclesiastical progress of all ages. It will be useful if I can intelligently and practically speak of the mortgage as a blessing and as a curse. There is much absurd and wholesale denunciation of borrowing money. If I should request all those who have never asked a loan to rise, there would not out of this audience be one get up unless it were some one who had acted so badly at the start that he knew no one would trust him. At the inception of nearly all enterprises, great or small, a loan is necessary. Years ago an Irish man landed with fifty cents in his pocket on the Battery, asked the loan of one dollar from an entire stranger, and now is among the New York princes. A mortgage is merely borrowed strength of others to help us in crises of individual or national life on the promise that we will pay them for the help rendered. But what is true in secularities is more true in ecclesiastical affairs. If churches had not been built till all the money could be raised, tens of thousands of our best churches would never have been built, and millions of those who are now Christians on earth or saints in heaven would never have been comforted or saved. The old Collins's line of steamers went into bankruptcy, but that does not change the fact that they transported hundreds of passengers in safety across the sea; and if all the churches in Christendom to-morrow went down under the thump of the sheriff's hammer, that would not hinder the fact that they have already transported thousands into the kingdom, and have done a stupendous good that all earth and hell can never undo. All consider it right to borrow for a secular institution. Is it not right to borrow for a religious? It is safer to borrow for the Church than for any other institution, because other institutions die, but a Church seldom. When the Israelites of my text wanted to rebuild their homes, and wanted to borrow money for that purpose, the mortgagers did well to let them have it, though I wish they had not asked twelve per cent. But after a while the mortgage spoken of in the text ceased to be a blessing, and became a plague. It had helped them through a domestic and ecclesiastical crisis, but now they could carry it no longer, and they cried out for rescue. If a blessing lies too long, it gets to be a curse. At the first moment the farmer can get the mortgage off his farm, and the merchant the mortgage off his merchandise, and the citizen the mortgage off his home, and the charitable institution the mortgage off its asylum, and the religious society the mortgage off its church, they had better do it. I have heard people argue the advantage of individual debts and national debts and Church debts; but I could not, while the argument was going on, control my risibilities. It is said that such debts keep the individual and the Church and the State busy trying to pay them. No doubt of it. So rheumatism keeps the patient busy with arnica, and neuralgia keeps the patient busy with hartshorn, and the cough with lozenges, and the toothache with lotions; but that is no argument in favour of rheumatism, or neuralgia, or coughs, or toothache. Better, if possible, get rid of these things, and be busy with something else.

(T. De Witt Talmage.)

People
Artaxerxes
Places
Jerusalem
Topics
Borrow, Borrowed, Fields, King's, Lands, Money, Pay, Saying, Tax, Taxes, Tribute, Vine-gardens, Vineyards
Outline
1. The Jews complain of their debt, mortgage, and bondage
6. Nehemiah rebukes the usurers, and causes them to make a covenant of restitution
14. He forbears his own allowance, and keeps hospitality

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Nehemiah 5:4

     5415   money, uses of
     5577   taxation

Nehemiah 5:1-5

     4538   vineyard
     5311   extortion
     5569   suffering, hardship

Nehemiah 5:1-12

     5274   credit

Nehemiah 5:3-5

     5289   debt

Nehemiah 5:3-13

     5233   borrowing

Nehemiah 5:4-5

     5389   lending
     6115   blame

Library
An Ancient Nonconformist
'... So did not I, because of the fear of God.'--Neh. v. 15. I do not suppose that the ordinary Bible-reader knows very much about Nehemiah. He is one of the neglected great men of Scripture. He was no prophet, he had no glowing words, he had no lofty visions, he had no special commission, he did not live in the heroic age. There was a certain harshness and dryness; a tendency towards what, when it was more fully developed, became Pharisaism, in the man, which somewhat covers the essential nobleness
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Youthful Confessors
'But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank; therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. 9. Now God had brought Daniel into favour and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs. 10. And the prince of the eunuchs said unto Daniel, I fear my lord the king, who hath appointed your meat and your drink; for why should he see your faces worse liking than the children which
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Last Days of the Old Eastern World
The Median wars--The last native dynasties of Egypt--The Eastern world on the eve of the Macedonian conquest. [Drawn by Boudier, from one of the sarcophagi of Sidon, now in the Museum of St. Irene. The vignette, which is by Faucher-Gudin, represents the sitting cyno-cephalus of Nectanebo I., now in the Egyptian Museum at the Vatican.] Darius appears to have formed this project of conquest immediately after his first victories, when his initial attempts to institute satrapies had taught him not
G. Maspero—History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, V 9

Influences that Gave Rise to the Priestly Laws and Histories
[Sidenote: Influences in the exile that produced written ceremonial laws] The Babylonian exile gave a great opportunity and incentive to the further development of written law. While the temple stood, the ceremonial rites and customs received constant illustration, and were transmitted directly from father to son in the priestly families. Hence, there was little need of writing them down. But when most of the priests were carried captive to Babylonia, as in 597 B.C., and ten years later the temple
Charles Foster Kent—The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament

Ezra-Nehemiah
Some of the most complicated problems in Hebrew history as well as in the literary criticism of the Old Testament gather about the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Apart from these books, all that we know of the origin and early history of Judaism is inferential. They are our only historical sources for that period; and if in them we have, as we seem to have, authentic memoirs, fragmentary though they be, written by the two men who, more than any other, gave permanent shape and direction to Judaism, then
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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